Apple releases iOS 11 beta 5

The fifth beta of Apple’s iOS 11 platform has been released to developers willing to pay $US99 a year to access the first iterations of its new operating system.

If you’re in the public beta test group for iOS 11, you’ll be able to force your iPhone or iPad to update to the latest version in the next few days via its settings menu, although there’s normally a short wait while the company tests it won’t completely brick devices.

As you should expect from any update not officially released in the public domain, iOS 11 beta 5 isn’t the final iteration that will be freely available to all iPhone and iPad owners when it’s publicly released in September. This means you’ll need to be prepared for crashes, freezes and other bugs and TechCrunch has recommended you don’t install it on a device you use as your main phone for this reason.

The iOS 11 beta 5 doesn’t add much but some bug fixes to the previous test version. Despite ‘Messages in the Cloud’ rumoured to debut in this version, it has now been delayed as Apple attempts to finesse its performance. “Users can continue to receive and store messages on each device and they can continue to backup and restore messages using iCloud backup,” the release notes explained.